I'm So Sorry

Chapter Thirty-Three

Jackson

"Okay. I choose Jackson first." Jessie's voice stays quiet, but she wipes some of the tears off her face. That's an improvement.

"What do I say?" I ask honestly. I want to do this because I think we need it. Mason and Jessie were brave enough to share their thoughts, brave enough to tell everyone what they were thinking. How did we just go through all of that in the last fifteen minutes?

"We need to open up, we need to talk. We need to get all of this out into the open or this...us...we're gonna fall apart, we're going to tear down the middle." Randy is looking at me with the most serious look I've ever seen. "Talk to us. Tell us...tell us about what happened in middle school."

I look at him. "What about middle school?" I question.

Randy grows quiet again, making me more anxious. What doesn't he know?

"I can't say. This is your story, Jackson. Tell them what happened. Tell them about what you wanted to do."

Everyone is staring at me again, and I can feel Olivia's eyes the hardest. I can feel her pain and her sorrow hitting me but I try to ignore it.

"I hate it...how you guys are confident and okay with your sexuality. I've been trying to be like that for years...I've been trying to tell myself that I am gay and that's okay, that this is the life I was meant to live. But when we were in middle school..."

I look around the circle again. I can't tell them. This isn't something I should have to tell them, this isn't something I should have to share.

"I know you're scared, Jackson," Olivia says quietly. "But it's okay. Just tell everyone."

I look down at my feet, barely visible in the grass. I didn't ever expect to tell this secret, but it seems like people already know. It seems like it doesn't matter what I say, someone else knows and will tell it for me. I'm not ready to tell this secret. I'm not ready for the reactions and sympathy that is bound to happen from it all. But I know I have no choice. I know they're going to make me talk.

"After what happened in the cafeteria, the big fight and everything...I was...I was going to kill myself."

"Oh my God," Jessie covers her mouth, the look in her eyes full of terror. "No, Jackson."

"There's so much that I was dealing with that I couldn't talk to anyone about, I mean how do you talk to your mother about being gay? How was I supposed to talk to anyone about being gay? I had no friends; I had no purpose in my life every time I looked at myself in the mirror. There was no one there looking back at me. How was I supposed to go forward when there was nothing to go towards?"

I turn to Olivia. "How did you know?" I sound so tired in saying it, though I want to sound angry. I want to sound frustrated with her, I want to sound completely and fully aggravated. How could she know this, when I never told her or anyone else? "How could you know this?" But I can't be angry, I realize. "You saved my life that day. I looked up to you after that because you...you saved me from killing myself."

"It's why I went to talk to you that day," she whispers, looking down at her hands. "I knew there was something wrong with you. I knew you were depressed, you were distancing yourself from everyone else in the entire class, you never talked to anyone, you sat and read by yourself at recess and...Jackson I watched them beat you that day." She looks back up at me, making sure to look me straight in the eyes. "I watched them beat the little bit of life you had out of you that day. I thought you were going to die on the floor in that cafeteria. I thought...I don't know what I thought."

Olivia starts crying right there. She practically gives in and cries. Seemingly forgetting for once that all of us are watching her.

"Jackson, no one here cares if you're gay. This world isn't black and white; it's going to have mixed colors in it too, okay? We're going to be here for you and we're going to support you through everything you're going through. Who cares if you're the only person who is gay? Who cares about any of this? When we graduate, when we're handed that fucking diploma, none of this is going to matter anymore!" She wipes tears away from her cheeks. "We're going to get the fuck out of here. Everything is going to get better, I swear!"

We all sit in silence as she cries into her hands, Olivia Parker, the biggest bitch you'll ever meet but the one person who always has been there for me...Olivia is crying right now.

Olivia is crying for me. She cares about me enough to do this, to break down in front of all of us, to lose herself onto our group, then why have I been hiding behind all of this? Why have I been so closed up this entire time?

Olivia

"Talk to us, Olivia." Jackson's voice breaks through my sobs. "Please. Just...talk to us. I opened up, I told everyone what you knew about me, what has been my biggest secret since I was in middle school so now I pick you. What's wrong?"

'What's wrong?' Huh, that question has become so mundane I don't know how to answer it anymore. I don't know what the correct answer would be to give. Pffh, 'What's wrong?' I don't know the answer to that anymore. I legitimately don't know what to tell them. They wouldn't begin to understand.

"I..." What do I say to them? What do I tell them? God, Jessie's been raped and Mason's dad has been beating him and Jackson just told everyone he wanted to kill himself when we were eleven. How does someone just come out with his or her secrets like that?

"You can tell us," Shannon says kindly. "We're going to listen, Olivia, I promise."

I lift my head to look at the group of people in front of me. I look at each of them and I think about how I know each and every one of them. And then I remind myself that secrets...secrets aren't going to define me any longer.

I saved Jackson's life. Why can't I be that person right now?

"I hate—no I despise the person that I am. I absolutely detest myself." I look around the group. "My mother, my sister, they act this way too. I don't have a father or any role model to help me through. Nobody was there to teach me how to be the good kid. And the older I've gotten the more bitter I've gotten, but what about? I have no reason to be angry anymore..." I wipe tears out from under my eyes and I let out a cross between a laugh and a sigh. "God, I never thought I'd hear myself admit any of this out loud to any of you. Not even you, Jackson," I sniff. "You haul away so many emotions for so long you seem to forget they even exist."

I start laughing through my tears. "I don't want to be this person anymore. I can't be like my family any longer. I can't be like all those assholes that think being like this is going to get them places in life. I just...I can't do this anymore."

Shannon

You hide your entire personality away for so long you seemingly become an entirely different person.

And that's what Olivia's been doing.

No. No that's not true. That's what I have been doing this whole time.